


Paper Paladin

by missazrael



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dungeons and Dragons, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, spoilers for season six
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 00:04:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14988437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missazrael/pseuds/missazrael
Summary: They ask you to play a game with them.





	Paper Paladin

**Author's Note:**

> Please note, spoilers through season six! If you're not caught up, this has a major plot reveal in it.

They ask you to play a game with them.

You are hesitant, as you always are, when they ask you to spend time with them away from the battlefield. On the battlefield, there is purpose; there is a mission. There are distractions, thousands of them, coming in at all angles, and they will, naturally, be distracted. If they are distracted, they won’t notice anything is amiss. They won’t notice any little quirks or habits that _She_ didn’t know, or never bothered to learn; they won’t have time to pick up on how you are different, how you are a shade, a shadow, a hole imitating the form of what they once knew. You are a mimic; you are a master mimic, because your very survival depends on it. You learn by imitation, by deduction, by constant, frantic calculations and schematics. 

But still, you avoid them when you are away from the battlefield. You avoid them when you think they might see you.

They are insistent. The Green shoves the book into your hands, unaware that one of them could—and very easily—snap her neck in a movement too quick to see, and looks up at you with wide, beseeching eyes. _Please play_ , she asks. _We need another player or it doesn’t work_ , she explains, and you give in, knowing that _He_ wouldn’t be able to deny her.

You had learned that very quickly: when He is needed, He responds. And so must you.

The Orange hands you a book and a twenty-sided die and tells you to roll a character, then turns back to the Green and the Yellow, guiding them through their little adventure. You open the book, paging through it, looking at the classes. You look at the character sheets of the Green and the Yellow; a healer and a fighter. Appropriate. Running quick calculations in your mind, you know that you should make an offensive magic user, a sorcerer.

But then you turn a page, and your eyes are drawn to the top of the page. And you know.

You roll a paladin.

~*~

Your first paladin does poorly, eaten by one of the Vermin. They ask you, then, if you don’t want to try something else. Why not a bard, or a magic user, or a rogue? You start to answer, but then the Red and the Blue come in and join, and the group is distracted. You sink back, letting them argue, and run scenarios in your head.  
What would He do? You listen to the conversation around you, and understand that the Blue will be playing a ranger, and the Red a rogue. The party will be more well-rounded, but it could still benefit from an offensive magic user.

And yet…

Your eyes scan the graph paper, and you realize something: you _want_. You rarely _want_ , the sensation is unfamiliar, but now you do. You want so badly it hurts, so strongly it creates an ache in your chest, similar to the ache you give yourself when you do pushups until this body collapses in exhaustion, trembling and unable to move. 

You want to be a paladin.  
Tentatively, with great fear, you reach out with your mind. You have never done this before, and you are glad the Red is arguing with the Orange about something, and no one is paying any attention to you. You reach out, and try to find out if _She_ is watching, She who is always there, lingering in the shadowy corners of your mind. If _She_ is watching, then you will create a dark sorcerer, and rain down fire on your paper enemies, and leave behind a swath of destruction shaped like a Galra ship.

 _She_ isn’t paying attention. She has no time for these foolish games, does not believe them worthy of her notice. She is distracted by other things, and you retreat away before she notices your consciousness nipping at the ragged ends of her cloak.

You roll another paladin, exactly like the first, and you have a moment of weakness, a moment of doubt, as unfamiliar to you as the feeling of _want_. You name your paladin Takashi Shirogane, and there is a moment, when you say your creation’s name, that feels like it stretches on forever, taut and endless, when you feel like it is all about to come crashing in around you.

They don’t notice, too caught up in their own machinations, and you relax a fraction. It was a good decision, you decide; it is what He would have done.

~*~

The game lasts for hours—five of them in total, with twenty-three minutes in addition—but time takes on an unfamiliar quality: it flies. It does not weigh heavy on your shoulders; it does not wrap itself around you like a cloak, smothering in its very endlessness. It dances along, as blindingly fast as the Red’s rogue, as dazzlingly clever as the Blue’s ranger, and you are glad. You roll your dice, you make your moves, you play your paladin. You play your creation that is, in truth, not a creation at all.

You play at being Takashi Shirogane.

You play at being brave, and noble, and selfless. You play at loving your friends, at wanting to protect them, at wanting to do the right thing for no other reason than it is the right thing to do. You play at defense; at offense; at healing; at magic. You play at death, but you shy away from that, letting the Green and the Blue get most of the kills, lingering back with the Yellow and using your limited magic to assist as much as you can. You know that, all too soon, you will be called upon to play at death, and not the death of paper monsters, but the death of the Green and the Yellow and the Blue and the Red.

And the death of the Blade, who is lost somewhere in the cosmos now, searching for answers. You are glad of it; the Blade knows you better than all of them, better even than the Green’s father or brother, and the Blade would know. He would see through your falsehood and expose you, and this would all end.

You would no longer be asked to play games. 

You would no longer be asked to play at being Takashi Shirogane.

~*~

The final battle looms, and the Orange throws everything he has at you. The others lean over their pages in excitement, dice clutched in hands, pencils ready to calculate. You roll with abandon, attack the beast as best you can, but it’s only through teamwork that it falls.

They all cheer, delighted at their success, flushed with pride and accomplishment, and you sit back. You know He would smile here, and so you do, and it doesn’t sit awkward on your lips, the way it usually does. It feels natural, and you realize, with some small amount of wonder, that you are happy. You are joined in with them, you are comrades, and even though it is only on paper, it is not false.

You are a paper paladin, but it is real, it is true, and you wonder if the emotion welling in your chest is pride.

You quash it. _She_ would not like that; She would not allow it. 

_Did you like it?_ they ask. _Did you have fun, Shiro?_

And you look out at them, at these infants who will, one day soon, fall at your hand, who will flounder and drown at your hands, and you smile, and even the Blade wouldn’t be able to tell a difference between your smile and His. You smile, and you answer, and you know that they will misunderstand your meaning but just this once, just this one time, you must speak a truth.

“It’s all I ever wanted to be.”

They laugh, as you knew they would, and you look down at your paper, at your notes and numbers, written in His careful, precise hand, and you run your thumb across the name of your creation, of your character.

Takashi Shirogane. All you ever wanted to be.


End file.
